The Birth of Israel : Myths and Realities

In this ground-breaking and controversial history of the founding of Israel, originally published in 1987, noted Israeli scholar and peace activist Simha Flapan gives a candid account of one of the most momentous political events of the 20th century. The official story is well known: the Zionists welcomed the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state; the Arabs rejected partition and launched a war to drive the Jews into the sea; the Palestinians fled Israel despite the efforts of Jewish leaders to get them to stay; after Israel’s victory in 1948 its hand was extended in peace, but not a single Arab leader responded.The Birth of Israel exposes these ‘historical truths’ as propaganda myths that have misguided Israel policy for decades. Drawing on declassified material - from Ben-Gurion’s war diaries to the minutes of secret meetings - Flapan reconstructs the real events of that critical time.He demonstrates that the Zionist leadership accepted partition purely as a tactical